RED THREAD PRESS STATEMENT, MONDAY NOVEMBER 30, 2009
RED THREAD PRESS STATEMENT, MONDAY NOVEMBER 30, 2009
A plague on all their Houses -
We have called this press conference for two main purposes:
One, after many weeks of picketing by Red Thread, Grassroots Women across Race and Help & Shelter to demand the speedy passage of the promised sexual offences legislation, to express our disgust with the failure of Parliament to give violence in personal relationships the same priority they give (although with different perspectives on the two sides of the House) to public violence. Our support for the call by the Joint Opposition Political Parties for an International Enquiry into all the public violence of recent years does not lessen this disgust. To remind the media and public of just one example of the destructive impact of this lack of concern: two years ago four boys aged five to eight were raped by a businessman. To date the Prosecution has discontinued one case because the defence lawyer confused the child; one case was never taken to court because the child was too young; another case has not yet been taken; and there is just one ongoing case on which the magistrate is about to rule. The Sexual Offences Legislation we want passed is supposed to make it more likely that reports of sexual violence will progress briskly through the courts, but all sides in Parliament clearly find other pieces of legislation more urgent than one which will protect not only adult women, but girls and boys, including infants and toddlers.
Two, after a period in which Guyana marked Child Protection Week, the International Day against Child Abuse, and the International Day against Violence against Women, to draw attention to and protest against the stubborn refusal to admit, much less address the fundamental causes of the increase in violence against women and children and in other forms of violence in Guyana. It is on this second issue that we want to expand.
There are several causes which we have written and spoken about before: (1) the effect of teaching children that violence is the right way to deal with behavior we want to change; (2) the impact on children of the increasing number of hours that their low-waged carers have to work, some of them on long shifts that take them away from their children for up to 12 hours at a time; (3) the economic violence and injustice of the unbridgeable gap between prices and incomes for those with the lowest incomes; (4) the discrimination in access to jobs and contracts. But in our view, outside of these, the single biggest cause of the continued rise in violence that we bemoan is that too many victims do not get and too many other Guyanese see no reason to expect, justice from the institutions that are supposed to ensure justice – police, army, prison service, or courts, including prosecutors without the tools to combat defence lawyers who are often not only more “learned” than they, but more willing to revictimise the victim.
Lawlessness within the state continues to breed violence and lawlessness among the people.
A Tuesday, December 1, 2009 release date has now been announced for the report ordered by President Jagdeo into the torture of a teenaged boy on whose genitals a flammable liquid was thrown and then set alight by police who arrested and placed him in the adult lock-ups, without the knowledge of his parents or the Probation and Welfare Officer. That will be 11 days after the date on which the report was promised. Whatever its findings, we believe that it was wrong for the President to be the person calling for the enquiry; wrong for him to call on the police to investigate themselves (setting thieves to catch thieves); wrong for him to limit the investigation to the torture of the young boy; and wrong for the enquiry to be framed in such a way that the culture that permits and encourages the torture that one Minister of Government famously called “roughing up” will remain untouched. If the system was working as the law says, the police would not have had a chance to torture the boy. If the system wasn’t dysfunctional and its dysfunctionality at least tolerated, the internal police mechanisms would have kicked in so that, for example, the boy’s lawyer would have had access to him or someone in the station would have intervened before his torturers set him alight.
What the state is trying to do is to draw an indelible line between the torture of the boy – which could not be swept under the dirty carpet after Kaieteur News published the photograph which made the torture undeniable - and all the previous, credible allegations of torture and murder leveled against the police and army, as well as the other previous, credible allegations of brutality leveled against the prison service, the police and the army. Those other acts of brutality were not, after all, against a child; they could be justified simply by calling the victims criminals. To name just one case on which we have commented before: the image of Troy Small trembling uncontrollably from the effects of what he had suffered at the hands of the police while in custody remains fresh in our minds.
Even the letter which the Medical Officer who examined the teenaged boy wrote to lambaste the GHRA for its legitimate criticism of his treatment of the child exposed the culture of violence in the security apparatus by showing that he saw (and sees) nothing wrong with administering medical treatment to a prisoner with a hood over his head or with not acting to ensure that the prisoner was taken to a hospital for the medical treatment he himself thought was needed.
In the murder of Dweive Ramdass on the Essequibo River, three ranks have been charged with murder and now a Petty Officer who was in charge of the base at Fort Island has been tried and dismissed “with dishonor” because he left the base, thereby facilitating the actions of his three juniors. In the torture of the teenage boy, so far three low-level policemen have been charged with unlawful and malicious wounding with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or cause grievous bodily harm, and one senior policewoman transferred in what some fear might be scapegoating. In neither case has the punishment gone high enough and we hope – but are afraid to expect - that the report due out tomorrow will go fearlesslessly where it needs to go. The actions taken in both cases do not begin to address the changes and disciplinary action needed to redress the horrors that we have been treated to by the disciplined services.
How can we have faith in the intentions of the government to alter the status quo when the symposium recently held at the Convention Centre was addressed with the same platitudes we’ve heard before, and when that symposium came up with recommendations which fell far short of the comprehensive recommendations made by the Chang Commission and others?
To return to the Coast Guard, what is the status of investigations into the whereabouts of Ricky Jainaraine who disappeared in August – three months ago - in a boat collision which left his father Jainaraine Dinanauth and Henry Gibson dead, a collision in which the Coast Guard would also appear to be implicated? Where is the concern for speedy justice for the child or his mother?
Lawlessness within the state continues not only to breed violence and lawlessness among the people but to breed a culture of justification of violence and lawlessness.
Both the Guyanese who supported and defended the murderous activities of the gangs that emerged after the 2002 prison jailbreak and the Guyanese who supported and defended the murderous activities of the Phantom Squad led by druglord Roger Khan, it is alleged in collusion with members of the government, had the same justification - that only those who take justice into their own hands get justice in Guyana.
That is also the justification offered by every licensed and unlicensed firearm holder who shoots a would-be bandit and every householder and passerby who catches a thief and beats him, as they say with glee, “to a pulp”.
Not being able to rely on law enforcement agencies for justice is the reason many women still give for why they so often don’t report domestic violence to the police. Not trusting them is another, related reason – the one given by a woman, who, speaking recently to Red Thread about why she hadn’t used the new Child Care and Protection Agency hotline to report a mother who was beating her child “to a pulp”, asked, “Who dey gun send? Somebody who gun mek de woman know is a neighbor call dem, den what?”
Finally, one of Red Thread’s priority areas of action is to work against all forms of violence, especially as they affect women and children, beginning with domestic and sexual violence but including racial, political and state violence. In pursuit of this we provide services on both the coast and the interior, particularly in the area of domestic and sexual violence against women and children. But we have never limited ourselves and will never limit ourselves to bandaging up wounds – and we regret that the government’s response to criticisms of its shortcomings and misdeeds is shrill dismissal. Statements made in the recent debate in the Parliament from the Government benches indicate that the mindset remains the same: if you disagree with our actions we will say that you approve of crimes. This is what Ms Texeira and Mr Rohee meant when they returned to the chorus that some people are more concerned with the rights of criminals than with the rights of victims. (SN, Sat, November 28). In relation to Minister Persaud’s reported reminder that “members of his party have been victims of police brutality in the past”, it would be worth someone’s time to find the condemnations of that often lesser brutality made in those long-ago days by both Mr. Persaud’s party and other opposition parties.
Since we called the press conference the November 29, 2009 Guyana Chronicle reported that on “Perspectives This Week – Law Enforcement Accountability” on NCN Channel 11, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Cabinet Secretary “stress(ed) the importance of law enforcement accountability in democratic societies to sustain public trust in the security services and advance public safety, and highlighted the significant efforts of government towards achieving that objective during its time in office’” This is the spin that is leaving Guyana mired in lawlessness and violence.
Signed:
Karen de Souza
Andaiye
Halima Khan
Vanessa Ross
Wintress White
For Red Thread
November 30, 2009
A plague on all their Houses -
- The state’s, for rampant lawlessness and shrill dismissal of constructive criticism
- The Joint Opposition Political Parties’, for craven inaction on personal violence even as they address public violence
We have called this press conference for two main purposes:
One, after many weeks of picketing by Red Thread, Grassroots Women across Race and Help & Shelter to demand the speedy passage of the promised sexual offences legislation, to express our disgust with the failure of Parliament to give violence in personal relationships the same priority they give (although with different perspectives on the two sides of the House) to public violence. Our support for the call by the Joint Opposition Political Parties for an International Enquiry into all the public violence of recent years does not lessen this disgust. To remind the media and public of just one example of the destructive impact of this lack of concern: two years ago four boys aged five to eight were raped by a businessman. To date the Prosecution has discontinued one case because the defence lawyer confused the child; one case was never taken to court because the child was too young; another case has not yet been taken; and there is just one ongoing case on which the magistrate is about to rule. The Sexual Offences Legislation we want passed is supposed to make it more likely that reports of sexual violence will progress briskly through the courts, but all sides in Parliament clearly find other pieces of legislation more urgent than one which will protect not only adult women, but girls and boys, including infants and toddlers.
Two, after a period in which Guyana marked Child Protection Week, the International Day against Child Abuse, and the International Day against Violence against Women, to draw attention to and protest against the stubborn refusal to admit, much less address the fundamental causes of the increase in violence against women and children and in other forms of violence in Guyana. It is on this second issue that we want to expand.
There are several causes which we have written and spoken about before: (1) the effect of teaching children that violence is the right way to deal with behavior we want to change; (2) the impact on children of the increasing number of hours that their low-waged carers have to work, some of them on long shifts that take them away from their children for up to 12 hours at a time; (3) the economic violence and injustice of the unbridgeable gap between prices and incomes for those with the lowest incomes; (4) the discrimination in access to jobs and contracts. But in our view, outside of these, the single biggest cause of the continued rise in violence that we bemoan is that too many victims do not get and too many other Guyanese see no reason to expect, justice from the institutions that are supposed to ensure justice – police, army, prison service, or courts, including prosecutors without the tools to combat defence lawyers who are often not only more “learned” than they, but more willing to revictimise the victim.
Lawlessness within the state continues to breed violence and lawlessness among the people.
A Tuesday, December 1, 2009 release date has now been announced for the report ordered by President Jagdeo into the torture of a teenaged boy on whose genitals a flammable liquid was thrown and then set alight by police who arrested and placed him in the adult lock-ups, without the knowledge of his parents or the Probation and Welfare Officer. That will be 11 days after the date on which the report was promised. Whatever its findings, we believe that it was wrong for the President to be the person calling for the enquiry; wrong for him to call on the police to investigate themselves (setting thieves to catch thieves); wrong for him to limit the investigation to the torture of the young boy; and wrong for the enquiry to be framed in such a way that the culture that permits and encourages the torture that one Minister of Government famously called “roughing up” will remain untouched. If the system was working as the law says, the police would not have had a chance to torture the boy. If the system wasn’t dysfunctional and its dysfunctionality at least tolerated, the internal police mechanisms would have kicked in so that, for example, the boy’s lawyer would have had access to him or someone in the station would have intervened before his torturers set him alight.
What the state is trying to do is to draw an indelible line between the torture of the boy – which could not be swept under the dirty carpet after Kaieteur News published the photograph which made the torture undeniable - and all the previous, credible allegations of torture and murder leveled against the police and army, as well as the other previous, credible allegations of brutality leveled against the prison service, the police and the army. Those other acts of brutality were not, after all, against a child; they could be justified simply by calling the victims criminals. To name just one case on which we have commented before: the image of Troy Small trembling uncontrollably from the effects of what he had suffered at the hands of the police while in custody remains fresh in our minds.
Even the letter which the Medical Officer who examined the teenaged boy wrote to lambaste the GHRA for its legitimate criticism of his treatment of the child exposed the culture of violence in the security apparatus by showing that he saw (and sees) nothing wrong with administering medical treatment to a prisoner with a hood over his head or with not acting to ensure that the prisoner was taken to a hospital for the medical treatment he himself thought was needed.
In the murder of Dweive Ramdass on the Essequibo River, three ranks have been charged with murder and now a Petty Officer who was in charge of the base at Fort Island has been tried and dismissed “with dishonor” because he left the base, thereby facilitating the actions of his three juniors. In the torture of the teenage boy, so far three low-level policemen have been charged with unlawful and malicious wounding with intent to maim, disfigure, disable or cause grievous bodily harm, and one senior policewoman transferred in what some fear might be scapegoating. In neither case has the punishment gone high enough and we hope – but are afraid to expect - that the report due out tomorrow will go fearlesslessly where it needs to go. The actions taken in both cases do not begin to address the changes and disciplinary action needed to redress the horrors that we have been treated to by the disciplined services.
How can we have faith in the intentions of the government to alter the status quo when the symposium recently held at the Convention Centre was addressed with the same platitudes we’ve heard before, and when that symposium came up with recommendations which fell far short of the comprehensive recommendations made by the Chang Commission and others?
To return to the Coast Guard, what is the status of investigations into the whereabouts of Ricky Jainaraine who disappeared in August – three months ago - in a boat collision which left his father Jainaraine Dinanauth and Henry Gibson dead, a collision in which the Coast Guard would also appear to be implicated? Where is the concern for speedy justice for the child or his mother?
Lawlessness within the state continues not only to breed violence and lawlessness among the people but to breed a culture of justification of violence and lawlessness.
Both the Guyanese who supported and defended the murderous activities of the gangs that emerged after the 2002 prison jailbreak and the Guyanese who supported and defended the murderous activities of the Phantom Squad led by druglord Roger Khan, it is alleged in collusion with members of the government, had the same justification - that only those who take justice into their own hands get justice in Guyana.
That is also the justification offered by every licensed and unlicensed firearm holder who shoots a would-be bandit and every householder and passerby who catches a thief and beats him, as they say with glee, “to a pulp”.
Not being able to rely on law enforcement agencies for justice is the reason many women still give for why they so often don’t report domestic violence to the police. Not trusting them is another, related reason – the one given by a woman, who, speaking recently to Red Thread about why she hadn’t used the new Child Care and Protection Agency hotline to report a mother who was beating her child “to a pulp”, asked, “Who dey gun send? Somebody who gun mek de woman know is a neighbor call dem, den what?”
Finally, one of Red Thread’s priority areas of action is to work against all forms of violence, especially as they affect women and children, beginning with domestic and sexual violence but including racial, political and state violence. In pursuit of this we provide services on both the coast and the interior, particularly in the area of domestic and sexual violence against women and children. But we have never limited ourselves and will never limit ourselves to bandaging up wounds – and we regret that the government’s response to criticisms of its shortcomings and misdeeds is shrill dismissal. Statements made in the recent debate in the Parliament from the Government benches indicate that the mindset remains the same: if you disagree with our actions we will say that you approve of crimes. This is what Ms Texeira and Mr Rohee meant when they returned to the chorus that some people are more concerned with the rights of criminals than with the rights of victims. (SN, Sat, November 28). In relation to Minister Persaud’s reported reminder that “members of his party have been victims of police brutality in the past”, it would be worth someone’s time to find the condemnations of that often lesser brutality made in those long-ago days by both Mr. Persaud’s party and other opposition parties.
Since we called the press conference the November 29, 2009 Guyana Chronicle reported that on “Perspectives This Week – Law Enforcement Accountability” on NCN Channel 11, the Minister of Home Affairs and the Cabinet Secretary “stress(ed) the importance of law enforcement accountability in democratic societies to sustain public trust in the security services and advance public safety, and highlighted the significant efforts of government towards achieving that objective during its time in office’” This is the spin that is leaving Guyana mired in lawlessness and violence.
Signed:
Karen de Souza
Andaiye
Halima Khan
Vanessa Ross
Wintress White
For Red Thread
November 30, 2009
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